Ecologically Sustainable Landscapes: The Role of Spatial Configuration

1990 ◽  
pp. 261-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard T. T. Forman
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Configuration ◽  
Sustainable Landscapes ◽  
Ecologically Sustainable

Peripheral Facial Features Guiding Eye Movements and Reducing Fixational Variability

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole X Han ◽  
Puneeth N. Chakravarthula ◽  
Miguel P. Eckstein
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movements ◽  
Spatial Configuration ◽  
Oculomotor System ◽  
Facial Features ◽  
Robust Solution ◽  
The Face ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Social Importance ◽  
Fixation Variability

Face processing is a fast and efficient process due to its evolutionary and social importance. A majority of people direct their first eye movement to a featureless point just below the eyes that maximizes accuracy in recognizing a person's identity and gender. Yet, the exact properties or features of the face that guide the first eye movements and reduce fixational variability are unknown. Here, we manipulated the presence of the facial features and the spatial configuration of features to investigate their effect on the location and variability of first and second fixations to peripherally presented faces. Results showed that observers can utilize the face outline, individual facial features, and feature spatial configuration to guide the first eye movements to their preferred point of fixation. The eyes have a preferential role in guiding the first eye movements and reducing fixation variability. Eliminating the eyes or altering their position had the greatest influence on the location and variability of fixations and resulted in the largest detriment to face identification performance. The other internal features (nose and mouth) also contribute to reducing fixation variability. A subsequent experiment measuring detection of single features showed that the eyes have the highest detectability (relative to other features) in the visual periphery providing a strong sensory signal to guide the oculomotor system. Together, the results suggest a flexible multiple-cue approach that might be a robust solution to cope with how the varying eccentricities in the real world influence the ability to resolve individual feature properties and the preferential role of the eyes.

Ecological Effect of Typical Plants for Releasing Oxygen and Declining Temperature in Anshun City

2013 ◽  
Vol 864-867 ◽  
pp. 328-332
Author(s):  
Lai Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Urban Ecosystems ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Living Environment ◽  
Ecological Effect ◽  
Species Evenness ◽  
Ecological Construction ◽  
Ecologically Sustainable ◽  
Ecologically Sustainable Development

In the urban ecosystems , the greening as a subsystem in the beautiful urban environment , it plays an active role of maintaining urban ecological balance and sustainable development. On the basis of surveying the greening in Anshun city of Guizhou, the ccological effect of 16 typical plants of them, releasing oxygen and declining temperature were studied. The results showed that the species less, structure only, species evenness low; the ability of releasing oxygen is different for different plants in different months, but the similar law is rising in June and August, declining in July and September; in August, the law of declining temperature is consistent with releasing oxygen, but the most obvious were Platanas acerifolia (0.32°C), Ligusttrum quiuoni (0.26°C), Parthenocissus trcuspidata (0.46°C) in arbors, shrubs and climbing plants. The results provide some basis informations and valuable suggestions for Anshun city ecological construction, improving the living environment and ecologically sustainable development.

Values, credibility, and ethics: public advocacy and conservation science

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 22
Author(s):  
Harry F. Recher
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Policies ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Conservation Science ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Ecologically Sustainable

While it is important for conservation scientists to advise government on policy, they need to do more than give advice. Conservation scientists need to be public advocates for the creation of economies that are ecologically sustainable. To achieve sustainability conservation scientists must assume a role of leadership in the development and application of global environmental policies. Not all scientists agree with advocacy, but advocacy for conservation of the natural world means creating an ethical world, a world where all generations and people as well as all other species can share the Earth’s resources. At present that world does not exist and conservation scientists need to take a more active role in its creation.

The Role of Space in the Formation of Social Ties

2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mario L. Small ◽  
Laura Adler
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Research ◽  
Social Ties ◽  
Spatial Configuration ◽  
Physical Space ◽  
Spatial Context ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Organizational Contexts ◽  
Spatial Composition ◽  
Architecture And Design

Recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in the relation between networks and spatial context. This review examines critically a selection of the literature on how physical space affects the formation of social ties. Different aspects of this question have been a feature in network analysis, neighborhood research, geography, organizational science, architecture and design, and urban planning. Focusing primarily on work at the meso- and microlevels of analysis, we pay special attention to studies examining spatial processes in neighborhood and organizational contexts. We argue that spatial context plays a role in the formation of social ties through at least three mechanisms, spatial propinquity, spatial composition, and spatial configuration; that fully capturing the role of spatial context will require multiple disciplinary perspectives and both qualitative and quantitative research; and that both methodological and conceptual questions central to the role of space in networks remain to be answered. We conclude by identifying major challenges in this work and proposing areas for future research.

scholarly journals Effects of Several Androgens and Steroid Metabolites on Erythropoietin Production in the Isolated Perfused Dog Kidney

Blood ◽  
1974 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luiz G. Paulo ◽  
Gregory D. Fink ◽  
Byung L. Roh ◽  
James W. Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Double Bond ◽  
Spatial Configuration ◽  
Significant Elevation ◽  
Methyl Group ◽  
Erythropoietin Production ◽  
Dog Kidney ◽  
Isolated Kidneys

Abstract In an attempt to clarify the role of the kidney in the action of several androgens and steroid metabolites on erythropoietin (ESF) production, ESF titers were measured in perfusates of isolated kidneys from dogs previously exposed to 4-hr hypoxia and perfused with blood containing testosterone (Test), 5α-17β-hydroxyandrostan-3-one (5αDHT), 5β-17β-hydroxyandrostan-3-one (5βDHT), 19-nortestosterone (19-nor), oxymetholone (Oxy), fluoxymesterone (Fluoxy), 3α-hydroxy-5β-pregnane, 11,20-dione (3αOH5βpreg), or 3β-hydroxy-5β-pregnane-20-one (3βOH-5 preg). ESF levels in the perfusates were assayed in exhypoxic polycythemic mice. Test, 5αDHT, oxy, fluoxy, and 3βOH5β-preg were found to produce a significant increase in ESF levels in the kidney perfusates. 5βDHT, 19-nor, and 3αOH5βpreg failed to produce a significant elevation in erythropoietin titers in the perfusates of the isolated perfused kidneys. These data suggest that the 4-5 double bond and the spatial configuration of the hydrogen at the 5 position as well as the lack of a methyl group in the 19 position of the basic androstan nucleus are important in the ability of these steroids to stimulate kidney production of ESF.

scholarly journals From Maggots to Millions: Biomimicking the Fly to Feed Humanity from its Waste in the 21st Century

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-18
Author(s):  
Charlie Drew
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Nutrient Recycling ◽  
Waste Product ◽  
Important Food ◽  
Waste Products ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
Violent Acts ◽  
Important Food Source ◽  
Ecologically Sustainable

‘QUIET PLEASE: Flies are breeding’… reads the sign displayed on the factory breeding room. A female black soldier fly (BSF) is laying around 1500 tiny white eggs onto an industrially designed grid. Over 21 days, one kilogram of her eggs will hatch into eight tonnes of larvae, which will initiate a natural process of waste nutrient recycling as they feed on containers of organic consumer waste that would otherwise go to landfill. In a factory in one of Cape Town’s rapidly developing post-apartheid townships, larvae are thus recycling some 250 tonnes of ‘pre’ and ‘post’ consumer waste every day, transforming negative value waste products into highly valuable insect protein, an alternative to fishmeal – an unsustainably ocean sourced protein. Ethnographic research in this factory explored this biomimically inspired innovation, which uses nature’s purification agents – fly larvae – to revalorise a potentially harmful waste product into a critically important food source for the 21st Century. This paper argues that these industrially designed insect farms produce specific technologies and violent acts of reproductive enclosure. By incorporating debates about the role of naturally inspired solutions that use biological labour to accumulate value, it makes plain the ethical implications that emerge from mimicking and enclosing nature in this way. It contends that the ambition of the discipline of biomimicry to reunite human economies with natural ecologies is overshadowed by the logics of capitalism. While the outcomes of biomimicry may indeed be ecologically sustainable, capitalism’s drive to privatise and profit from the knowledge and labour of nonhuman life means not only controlling animals and their products, but also controlling the processes of life through a constellation of scientific, bureaucratic and legal techniques.

scholarly journals Spatial Spillover Effects of Agricultural Transport Costs in Peru

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pedro Herrera-Catalán ◽  
Coro Chasco ◽  
Máximo Torero
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Configuration ◽  
Spillover Effects ◽  
Equilibrium Analysis ◽  
New Economic Geography ◽  
Spatial Equilibrium ◽  
Transport Costs ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Flow Models ◽  
Spatial Spillovers

The role of agricultural transport costs in core-periphery structures has habitually been ignored in New Economic Geography (NEG) models. This is due to the convention of treating the agricultural good as the numéraire, thus implying that agricultural transportation costs are assumed to be zero in these models. For more than three decades, this has been the standard setting in spatial equilibrium analysis. The paper examines the effects of agricultural transport costs on the spatial organisation of regional structures in Peru. In doing so, the Krugman’s formulation of iceberg transport costs is modified to introduce the agricultural transport costs into the dynamic of the NEG models. We use exploratory spatial flow data analysis methods and non-spatial and spatial origin-destination flow models to explore how the regional spatial structure change when real transportation data for agricultural goods is included into the iceberg transport costs formulation. We show that agricultural transport costs generate flows that are systematically associated with flows to or from nearby regions generating thus the emergence of spatial spillovers across Peruvian regions. The results of the paper support the contention that NEG models have overshadowed the role of agricultural transport costs in determining the spatial configuration of economic activities.

scholarly journals [E]motive Architecture: strategies for a behaviour-driven Space configuration

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Viola Cambié ◽  
Carlotta Zanoli
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Configuration ◽  
Social Role ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Generative Design ◽  
Dominant Form ◽  
Design Processes ◽  
High Performing ◽  
Intellectual Capacity ◽  
Pass Through

As Architect and Engineer, we used to work with the concept of Space. Struggling to find an exhaustive definition, we risk thinking about it as a framework with the same properties of the object we are going to design. Looking at the Space as an abstract background of the objects that we are going to place in it, we risk to not understand how it plays a cultural and social role in human affairs. The configurations of people can be influenced by, or influence, a configuration of space: therefore, the apparent effect of Architecture on social outcomes seems to pass through the relation of spatial layouts. Movement is by far the dominant form of space use and, following this logic, we can argue how spatial configuration can influence the pattern of movement in space. Generative design processes can be used to define the properties for a space layout that better stimulate a sense of well-being through human behavior monitoring. The potential role of generative design processes finds its maximum expression wherever a certain problem's parameters and interactions bring a level of complexity, much greater than that could be handled by human cognitive processes alone. Generative design integrates artificial intelligence by using search algorithms to achieve high-performing results. However, the emphasis on the 'automated design procedures' should not overshadow the central role of the designer's intellectual capacity, essential for the critical judgement towards the employment of algorithms, the selection of input data parameters as well as the criteria of evaluation. Architects and planners now have the chance to calibrate their designs looking at human comfort and social interaction.

scholarly journals The Role of Local Materials in Creating A Meaningful Visual Experiences in Urban Public Facilities

2019 ◽  
Vol 266 ◽  
pp. 06014
Author(s):  
Triandriani Mustikawati ◽  
Maria M.C Sengke ◽  
Paramita Atmodiwirjo ◽  
Yandi Andri Yatmo
Keyword(s):  
Architectural Design ◽  
Spatial Configuration ◽  
Field Studies ◽  
Public Facilities ◽  
Local Material ◽  
Different Types ◽  
3D Software ◽  
Local Materials

This paper discusses visibility potential of local material products that are used as part of architectural spaces. Knowing the visibility potential of local materials is essential to create visual clarity that supports the ease of spatial orientation and navigation and provides a meaningful visual experience in urban public facilities. This study aims at finding the property quality of objects from local materials that contribute to the visibility potential. Field studies were conducted to identify different types of products from local materials and their characteristics associated with the quality of space experience. The visibility analysis using 3D software program then was carried out by simulating the placement of objects as elements of space in a particular spatial configuration. The result reveals several patterns of possible placement of objects from local materials that have the best potential to enhance visibility. These patterns can add to the alternative vocabulary in architectural design.

Lobsters, Whales, and Traps: The Politics of Endangerment in the Gulf of Maine

2021 ◽  
pp. 251484862110568
Author(s):  
Sarah Besky
Keyword(s):  
Gulf Of Maine ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Environmental Groups ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
North Atlantic Right Whales ◽  
Climate Crisis ◽  
Ecologically Sustainable ◽  
Atlantic Coastal

In 2019, a debate arose among Maine lobster fishers and environmental groups over the role of lobster traps in killing North Atlantic right whales, the world's most endangered whale species. Maine fishers denied that their gear was killing whales. To do so, they leveraged longstanding representations by regional natural and social scientists of lobster fishing as part of a unique and ecologically sustainable “heritage” economy—one that was itself “endangered” by over-regulation. Setting this debate in the context of a global climate crisis that is irrevocably changing Atlantic coastal environments, this article shows how ecological fragility and white working-class fragility become yoked together. Efforts to understand what lobster traps do, and how they might do it differently, perpetuated a key feature of settler colonialism, namely, the tendency to seek harmony between resource extraction and conservation.

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